On Media

Twitter effectively shuts down Politwoops

Twitter has taken away the Sunlight Foundation's access to its developer API, effectively shutting down the foundation's popular Politwoops site which tracked deleted tweets by politicians.

Gawker was the first to point out that the site had stopped publishing earlier this week. Initially, the foundation said it was a technical issue before a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to Gawker they had revoked the API access.

"We strongly support Sunlight’s mission of increasing transparency in politics and using civic tech and open data to hold government accountable to constituents, but preserving deleted Tweets violates our developer agreement. Honoring the expectation of user privacy for all accounts is a priority for us, whether the user is anonymous or a member of Congress," the spokesperson told Gawker.

Politwoops is incredibly popular among journalists, as it tracked everything from typos and staff misfires to actual changes in position or even secret daughters. When Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl returned home after years of captivity, several politicians sent out tweets welcoming him home and calling him an American hero. But as it emerged that Bergdahl may have deserted, the politicians deleted their tweets, only to be caught by Politwoops.

In another instance, Politwoops helped reveal that Rep. Steve Cohen has a 'secret daughter' after he deleted a series of tweets at a young woman during the State of the Union in 2013, though a DNA test later showed she wasn't actually his daughter.

We've reached out for comment from the Sunlight Foundation and will update here accordingly.

UPDATE (11:50a.m.):

In a 'eulogy' for Politwoops, Sunlight Foundation president Christopher Gates said Twitter's decision was completely out of the blue for the foundation after years of running the site with Twitter's blessing.

"We are truly mystified as to what prompted the change of heart, and it's deeply disappointing to see Twitter kill a project they had supported since 2012. It is also disturbing to us that our feed was cut almost three weeks ago and our only direct communication came from Twitter last night, when we were told that their decision was not something that we could appeal, and, most surprisingly, they were not interested in reviewing any of the email conversation from 2012. Clearly, something changed — and we’re not likely to ever know what it was," Gates said.

Gates wrote that when Politwoops launched in 2012, the foundation worked with Twitter on the API issue to ensure a human editor would weed out low-level tweets, and with Twitter's blessing launched the site. Their recent decision shows that the internet isn't a true public forum, he added.

"Unfortunately, Twitter’s decision to pull the plug on Politwoops is a reminder of how the Internet isn’t truly a public square. Our shared conversations are increasingly taking place in privately owned and managed walled gardens, which means that the politics that occur in such conversations are subject to private rules. (In this case, Twitter’s terms of service for usage of its API.)" the foundation's president, Christopher Gates wrote in the post.